Unsung Hero

I am generally a modest chap. That’s mainly because I usually have a lot to be modest about. I rarely go out of my way to draw attention to my few meager achievements. But there are times when I must let the public know about certain events of vital significance that would otherwise have gone entirely unnoticed.

Here I am on the East Coast of the United States. Hurricane Irene chooses the same time to make a visit. That pretty much ruins our weekend and all of us are forced to remain indoors. There is great trepidation and concern about the potential damage that could be caused.

But, as it turned out, the impact of the storm was much less than was feared. Our area, in particular, was almost unscathed and we did not experience loss of power or any serious inconvenience. We just saw a lot of rain. This post reveals the true story behind that near miraculous turn of events.

On Saturday night, under virtual house arrest, with nothing much to do, the other members of the clan decided to have a karaoke singing session and roped me in to join them.

I have said before that any attempt to make me sing is fraught with danger. I am the true avatar of Cacophonix the Bard. I normally duck away from such activities and avoid tempting the fury of nature. But since Mother Nature had already made it abundantly clear that she was pretty miffed anyway, I figured it couldn’t get much worse.

I unleashed my own tornado through the microphone. With every note that I belted out, the others in the house cringed, ducked for cover, burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter and stuffed wads of cotton wool into their ears. But my musical effort must have produced a counter-hurricane. Just as the rendition of raag Malhar by Tansen would bring forth the rain clouds, or a performance of the raag Deepak by him would light fires all around, my foray into the world of music produced an anti-tempest of gigantic proportions that, I’m sure, neutralized Irene.

You may well ask what evidence I have to support this extraordinary claim. I can only point to the scoring mechanism of the karaoke system. On a previous occasion when I was coerced into taking part, I was the only participant to get a flat zero (out of 100) as a score. Apparently, the machine was so useless that it could adjust neither to my pitch nor to my tempo. Seriously, of what use is modern technology if it cannot catch on to the frequency of a human being’s voice? One kind-hearted person who was present at that time consoled me by saying that if I had set the key three notches lower and sung a little faster, I may well have scored around 70 but the device simply did not have the capacity to factor even those subtle adjustments into its stone-age calculations.

That’s my track record. So how else can you explain my consistently getting 92 this time around if not for the inclusion of the social benefit of my actions into the accounting? Mind you, 92 was also the score that the Supreme Editor got. The only compliment I have ever received from her about my music was on the one occasion when, at a dance party, she grudgingly conceded that my singing was better than my dancing. She is a trained vocalist and, on Saturday, must have felt exactly like how Charlie Chaplin must have when he entered a “Charlie Chaplin look-alike” contest and won the third prize. Clearly, the karaoke contraption knew that there was more at stake here than the mere comparison of tonal scale and the timing of beats. It may not have the ability to reflect minor technicalities but it sure does know how to look at the big picture.

You could technically argue that it was my singing that saved the day and, therefore, it would not be entirely appropriate for me to call myself an “unsung” hero. But I am scrupulously honest about such things. Using the term “singing” to describe my vocal performance is stretching that term way too far. I will politely and humbly acknowledge my contribution to humanity but will not state that I am anything other than an unsung hero.